


Alea Iacta Est

by Aramley



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Roman, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roman AU. Arthur is a military tribune, Eames cheats at dice, and the result is a merry chase</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alea Iacta Est

**Author's Note:**

> Set in Britannia, at a vaguely second century AD date. The Sixth legion is stationed at Eboracum, at modern York; Lindum is modern Lincoln, and Lutetia is modern Paris. [_Alea iacta est_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alea_iacta_est) means 'the die is cast'. I've chosen not to follow Roman naming conventions for the purely aesthetic reason that fake Roman names tend to sound awful ;) Thanks to [](http://pandatini.livejournal.com/profile)[**pandatini**](http://pandatini.livejournal.com/) for the beta <3

"He was using these," the centurion complains, tipping a set of bone dice into Arthur's hand. "They're weighted, sir."

Arthur rattles the dice together in his hand before he gives them an experimental toss across his desk. They tumble over the papers before settling, together, on sixes. The centurion fixes the other man with a blackly triumphant look from his unbruised eye.

"Lucky throw," the accused man says, good-naturedly.

Arthur raises an eyebrow. "Will I be as lucky if I roll again?"

"Now that, only the gods can say," the man says. He smiles, and his split lip beads with blood.

Arthur makes it a point to know his men, and he doesn't recognise this one. His tunic is torn over one shoulder; there are swirling tattos inked over his chest. British, maybe, Arthur thinks, and says, "You're not with my troops."

"I'm with the auxiliaries," says the man.

"What's your name?"

"Eames."

"Eames," Arthur says.

"It's Thracian," says Eames.

"It's not," says Arthur.

Eames shrugs. "It might be."

Arthur sighs. "What's your real name?"

"Tiberius Claudius Eames," says Eames. "After the dearly departed and deified - "

"Alright, yes, fine," says Arthur. "Tiberius Claudius Eames, I think the stables need mucking out. Thoroughly."

Tiberius Claudius Eames _winks at him_. Arthur hasn't been winked at since he and Dom accidentally ended up in the brothel quarter at Lutetia.

"As you say, tribune," says Eames.

-

The auxiliary decurion gives Arthur a long-suffering look when Arthur walks into his quarters and says, "So, Eames."

"Gambling or fighting?" he asks, and Arthur, with a wry smile, says, "Both."

The decurion sighs, and calls for wine.

-

Over the next month, Eames is accused fifteen times of cheating at one game or another; he gets into seven fistfights, and breaks the noses of four of Arthur's legionaries.

"Darling," Eames says, grinning broadly, on his knees in Arthur's quarters, again, a bruise already flushing imperial purple over his right cheekbone, "we really must stop meeting like this."

"Then you need to get better at cheating my legionaries," Arthur says.

"I was not cheating," Eames protests. "Your man's just a very sore loser."

"He says you won twenty-seven tosses in a row," says Arthur.

"I sacrifice very generously to my lady Fortune," says Eames, "and she is a faithful, tender mistress."

"Next time I'm going to have you flogged on the parade ground," says Arthur, waving him away.

"Promises, promises," Eames sing-songs, as he leaves.

Technically, the auxiliaries don't even come under Arthur's command, which wouldn't make much difference anyway; Arthur thinks you could decimate the legion and at the end Eames would be left standing in the odd row, smiling. There's just something about him. He's that kind of untouchable.

-

So really, Arthur thinks, he ought to have known.

-

"Sir, the legate wants to see you, sir, " the centurion says, panting. He is white-faced with horror. "Sir, the eagles are gone."

Arthur stares. "The eagles are gone."

"And," the centurion adds, visibly swallowing past a knot of panic, "the auxiliary tribune reports that Eames is missing."

Arthur feels, distantly, the stylus snapping in his hand. "Son of a _fucking bitch_."

-

Later, Dom sighs, "Arthur, you're taking this very personally."

"It is personal," Arthur hisses. He's pacing, furious. "That - he - under my _nose_."

"Sit down before you wear the floor out," Dom says, while he pushes a generous cup of wine across the table. "Drink something. Breathe. Where does he think he's going to go with a set of legionary standards? I'm sending the scouts out as soon as they can muster."

"I'm going too," says Arthur. He snatches up the cup of wine and drains half of it in one swallow.

Dom scrubs a hand across his face and says, "You really are taking this very personally."

"When I find him, I'm going to put his head on a pike outside the gates," says Arthur. "I'm going to leave his body to the crows and make an offering of his picked bones."

"Yeah," says Dom. He leans back in his chair. "This is going to end great."

Arthur pays him back by stealing his horse.

-

The first place Arthur looks is the haphazard township outside the walls, that lives like a tick on the dog's back of the fortress and its soldiers' money. Arthur rarely ventures into its poor cramped streets, but he knows well enough from his men its main attractions: that the only thing easier to buy there than a cup of unwatered wine is the company of a willing woman.

In short, he thinks, it's Eames' kind of place.

When Arthur asks after Eames in the various establishments of ill-repute that line the rough main street, the tavern-keepers spit in the dust at his feet to ward off further evils and tell him, if he finds Eames, to let him know that they hope he enjoys the shrivelling disease of the genitalia the gods are sure to bring down on him. None of them know where he might be headed.

-

"I hear you're asking after Eames," says the girl, clear-eyed and direct.

"Don't tell me," says Arthur, giving her a sweeping look, "he owes you money, too."

"Eyes up here, pal," says the girl, sharp as a blade between the ribs. "Actually, he asked me to give you this."

She produces a note from the purse at her belt and thrusts it at him. The note is a bill for a debt - god damn it, Eames - and on the back of that is a message in a scrawled cursive, which reads,

 _Darling,_

 _I wish I could have seen your face._

 _Eames (You were right - I was lying about the Tiberius Claudius part)_

 _By the bye, be a love and give Ariadne a silver bit from me? I didn't get the chance to repay her for the wonderful service she rendered me - now don't be jealous, it's not what you think._

Two of the verbs have been improperly conjugated, and 'darling' is in the wrong case. Arthur crumples the note in his hands.

"You know I could have you arrested," Arthur tells Ariadne.

"You could." Ariadne has the audacity to shrug. There's something like a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. "But then how would you ever find out which way he's heading?"

Arthur sets out on the road to Lindum three denarii lighter.

-

It rains two days out of the three days' ride to Lindum, and by the time Arthur draws within sight of the town he's skin-soaked and murderous, warmed only by planning the various tortures he intends to inflict upon Eames when he finds him. He knows a Gaulish recruit who says that the tribes of the far north have a way of opening the ribcage to remove the victim's beating heart. Arthur thinks that sounds like a riot.

"Excuse me," comes a call, disturbing Arthur from his thoughts. "Excuse me, sir!"

Arthur looks down to find a man standing at the edge of the road waving for his attention.

"Transport trouble," the man says, gesturing at his cart, which lists at a precarious angle. One of the cart's wheels is jammed into the cambered rain-gully at the road's edge, and the mule standing fetlock-deep in muddy rainwater looks up at Arthur with a _the hell with this_ expression.

"I'd appreciate some help," the man adds, hopefully.

"Of course," Arthur says, dismounting. Dom's horse snorts gratefully; he resents the hard use after so long fattening up on parade duty. There's a metaphor there, if Arthur were disrespectful enough of Dom's authority to make it.

It takes some hard work between the two of them to get the cart righted on the road again, but Arthur's used to heavy labour and the other man, trader though he is, he's no slouch at physical work. Arthur hears the clinking of glass vessels in their cases as the cart lurches back to equilibrium.

"What good fortune that you happened to pass by," the man says, grinning as he leans back against the cart to catch his breath. He holds out a muddy hand. "I am Yusuf."

"Arthur," says Arthur, pressing the offered hand. "Tribune of the sixth."

Yusuf's eyebrows rise as he takes in Arthur in his stained travelling clothes, his distinctly unmilitary state of dishevellment.

"I'm on detachment," Arthur says, and then, "Look, I realise that this is going to make me sound insane, but I'm looking for - you wouldn't happen to have seen a man - British, sort of this tall, uh, has tattoos over his shoulders. Cheats."

"Ah," Yusuf says, a smile breaking over his face. He shakes his head, amused. "You are _that_ Arthur."

"I'm _what_ Arthur, exactly," says Arthur, suddenly suspicious.

But Yusuf isn't listening, turning away instead to dig through one of the packs in his cart, saying, "In that case, I have something for you."

"Here," he says, tossing over a little silver coin. Arthur catches it and weights it in the palm of his hand, frowning. It's just a denarius, except - except that where it should bear the emperor's name it reads HELLO ARTHUR, and the obverse is emblazoned not with the goddess Roma, but with a tiny object that might be a die encircled with the legend A MERRY CHASE.

"This. This is." Arthur doesn't even have words for what this is. He is not sure that words exist in any language of the empire for what this is.

"Well," says Yusuf, climbing back up into the driving seat of his cart. "I hope you find your man, and if you do, tell him that he gave me a laugh, so this time I forgive, but if we ever meet again and he tries to pay me with illegal currency I will grind his testicles into a cure for baldness."

"I'll make sure to pass that along," says Arthur. "Right before I kill him."

Yusuf laughs, and taps the reins against the mule's back. Slowly, grudgingly, it begins to move.

"Good luck, my friend," Yusuf calls, over his shoulder, as the cart rumbles on. "Take the road south from Lindum! Follow the trail of angry tradesmen!"

Arthur laughs, in spite of himself. He curls a fist around the silver denarius, a warming weight against his palm.

Behind him, Dom's horse snorts a distinctly Dom-like disapproval.

-

It rains. A lot.

Britannia is Arthur's first tribunal post. Arthur doesn't mind a steep career curve, but this, he thinks, is kind of fucking ridiculous. When his term is up he's going to ask for a posting somewhere that won't make him feel he might at any moment start sprouting a covering of moss.

He hears that Africa is nice at this and every other time of year.

The road unfurls ahead, a stony stripe under a stony sky, south to the cities at Camulodunum and Londinium and, if you followed it far enough, to Rome with her dust and marble. It's three years since Arthur was last in Rome, when the Senate voted him his post and sent him off to Gaul to join Dom at Lutetia, where he found Dom pathetically in love with the governor's daughter; it had taken Arthur nearly a month to snap Dom into shape and convince Mal to accept his proposal ("Oh," she'd said, laughing, "of course I always meant to accept him, eventually. But don't you think he's _adorable_ when he pines?"). By the time they made the crossing to Britannia, Dom was swearing that he'd never work with another tribune. They'd go places, he promised. Well, Arthur thinks, they've gone places, that's true enough. The ass end of the empire, and then beyond it.

Arthur tucks his travel cloak tighter around him and ignores the chilly rainwater insinuating itself in rivulets down the neck of his tunic. Nights draw in early this late in the year, and the light is already changing from insipid grey to a blue-toned dusk. It's half a day's ride to the next post station at least, and Arthur doesn't relish the thought of another night spent being dripped on under a tree.

Just visible in the gloom across the open countryside a villa sits snug against the landscape. Arthur gives it a moment's consideration before he nudges Dom's horse in that direction.

-

The villa, Arthur realises, as he draws closer, is fucking enormous. What looked from the road like a small farmstead reveals itself to be a sprawling two-storied complex of white-washed stone and terracotta roof, columned all across its facade, nothing like the usual modest constructions of this backwater province. It's as though someone has picked up one of the grandest pleasure-villas of the Italian countryside and transplanted it like an exotic flower.

Servants appear with rehearsed efficiency to take his horse, his soaked cloak, to show him into the atrium and announce him to the _dominus_ , a tall, well-groomed man, who takes in Arthur head-to-toe with a quick assessing glance and then seems, oddly, to school his features out of amusement.

"I am Saito," says the man. "Welcome to my home."

 _Home_ , to Arthur, is currently a small room shared with with the decurion whose feet smell like boar. This is _palatial_. There is a soft, expensive smell of incense from the hearth shrine in the vestibule, and warmth rises very gently from the intricately tiled floor, upon which Arthur is suddenly very much aware that he is tracking mud and dripping rainwater.

"Arthur, tribune of the Sixth legion," says Arthur, inclining a brief, polite bow. "Thank you for your hospitality, sir."

"It is nothing, of course," says Saito, and then, with an enigmatic smile, "But I have to inform you that your reputation precedes you, Arthur."

Arthur frowns. "I don't follow."

"All will be revealed," says Saito. "But first, of course, you must change out of these wet clothes and bathe."

-

Arthur emerges scrubbed and oiled from the decadence of Saito's bath-house in a clean, soft tunic, feeling more at ease with the world than any time since he first heard the name _Eames_.

Saito looks up with a smile as Arthur is shown into his study. "Ah. A vast improvement."

"Thank you," says Arthur, dryly.

Saito's study is a beautiful room, one wall given over entirely to racks of parchment rolls, and the walls pitted with niches in which are nestled some of the fines statues that Arthur has ever seen.

"You admire my collection?" Saito asks, looking up to find Arthur staring at a bronze bust with a suspiciously Athenian look about it.

"It's astonishing," Arthur says, honestly. He's never seen anything to compare with it, outside the great collections of Rome.

"Let me show you my most recent acquisition," says Saito, setting down his stylus and tablet. "I think you will agree that it is quite - extraordinary."

"Some days ago," Saito says, as he leads Arthur through lavishly decorated rooms of painted fresco and tiled floors, "a man came to my estate with a small collection of sculpture. Ordinarily, of course, I do not see travelling salesman, but some of the work he had to show me was really quite fine, and I purchased one or two small bronzes before he showed me a piece which he claimed was a copy of a lesser known and lost work of the great Polykleitos. Naturally I understood this to be a lie, but I am an extraordinarily rich man, and the work intrigued me. The forgery was so excellent as to be almost a work of art itself."

Arthur asks, "How did you know it was a forgery?"

"Ah," says Saito, and he motions for Arthur to go ahead through a doorway. "Of course, I could not be entirely sure, until today. Perhaps you would like to judge for yourself."

Arthur takes one look at the statue standing on a low plinth against the far wall and says, "That son of a _bitch_."

-

"It is a remarkable likeness," says Saito and Arthur has to agree - through gritted teeth - that _yes_ , may all the gods damn Eames to the underworld, it _is_. Facially, at least - the rest of the statue is a Classical dream of heroic nudity that makes Arthur want to throw a tunic over it.

"Now he's just fucking with me," Arthur says.

"And yet," says Saito, "it is in some ways rather a touching gesture,"

Arthur is willing to forego the etiquette of hospitality to give that remark the icily withering look it deserves.

Yet Saito, utterly untouched, continues, "This man you seek, he is surely a person of unusual talents."

Arthur and his marble counterpart regard each other coolly. "I think that unusual does not _begin_ to cover it."

-

Before Arthur leaves, Saito insists on replacing Dom's exhausted and thoroughly resentful horse with a mount that has to be worth at least a year of Arthur's tribunal salary, and more likely a year of Dom's on top. Saito waves away Arthur's protests with an expansive, dismissive gesture.

"Consider it a gift," he says, smiling, "for the amusement you have brought me. In any case, I have many more such horses."

"You have _more_ of these?" Arthur says, before he remembers that Saito is a man who paid genuine price for a statue he knew to be fake, just for the fuck of it.

"I bought the breeding stock," Saito says, with the easy good humour of the appallingly wealthy. "It seemed neater."

-

Further south, the stretch of road is punctuated with villages, hamlets, rough little groupings huddled around the nucleus of a tavern or a travellers' station. Arthur is in one of these little taverns listening to the barkeep's story about a man who vaguely matches Eames' description fighting off four locals single-handed after a rigged game of knucklebones when a hand drops to his shoulder and a voice says, "So, I hear you're asking after Eames."

Arthur knows that voice. He turns, grimly. "Hello, Nash."

"Holy shit, Arthur," Nash says, his thin face shocked under its coat of grime. "What the hell!"

Nash is still wearing his old legionary issued tunic and cloak, though Arthur got him transferred out of the legion roughly five minutes after arriving into it himself. He'd been in the engineering corps, but his walls had the unfortunate habit of falling down.

"Arthur, what the hell," Nash says, again, as he sinks onto a stool next to Arthur. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Arthur shrugs. "You heard right. I'm looking for Eames."

Nash snorts. "How's a tribune get mixed up with someone like Eames?"

"I'm more interested in how you know Eames," Arthur says, because with Nash it's always better to keep your hand concealed.

"Oh, Eames," Nash says, with a thin, nervous laugh. "After I got kicked - I mean, after my transfer down here, I maybe got mixed up in some things that didn't exactly, uh, befit my station, shall we say. That's how I met Eames. He's pretty small-time, you know, he runs gambling scams, mostly does forgery work. Used to fake coins sometimes, little gold coins with fucking Caesar or Alexander the Great on them, to sell as medallions."

Arthur watches Nash evenly, and Nash blinks quick and fidgets under the steady gaze. Arthur smiles.

"You still know him?"

"Arthur," Nash says, with open dismay. He spreads his hands. "I've given all that up now, I swear. I'm straight as an arrow."

Arthur pushes three big coins across the grimy, pitted tabletop. Nash's greedy eyes track the movements of his hand.

"Yeah, so let me talk to some people," he says, covering the coins quickly with a sweaty palm, like he's afraid that Arthur will try to take them back.

Clearly, Nash is not as far out of the loop as he makes out; in an hour they're heading out west into the hilly regions where Roman law lies light on the land and where Nash's contacts say Eames has gone to ground. There are no roads into this territory, and Nash offers himself as a guide - for a little extra, of course, just to cover his missed salary. Arthur rolls his eyes and pays him the coins - half now, half when they find Eames. Nash is marginally better company than the horse, and he's an extra pair of eyes to keep watch when they make camp for the night.

-

And in the morning, both Nash and Saito's horse are gone, and the coin-purse at Arthur's belt is empty.

At this point in the journey, Arthur doesn't even know why he's surprised.

-

For a long time he sits staring at the ashes of the campfire and tries to work out which of the gods he has accidentally angered. He must have perpetrated some awesome act of unconscious sacrilege for the gods to have visited Eames upon him.

He turns his face up to the sky, which is, for once a clear, piercing blue, cloud-wisps drifting peacefully across the bright flat eye of the sun.

"I will sacrifice a bull to you," he tells the heavens and whatever deity might be open to bribery. "I will sacrifice ten bulls, and I will dedicate Eames' head on your altar. Is that enough?"

The sky remains mute. Arthur likes to think it's considering the offer.

He'd toss a coin to pick a direction to walk in, except that Nash is a piece of shit who left Arthur with nothing but the weighted die that Arthur confiscated from Eames back at the fortress, an age ago, which had got caught in the torn lining of his coin-purse and thus escaped Nash's thieving fingers. Arthur resists the urge to laugh as he rolls it back and forth across his hand. Odds, I go west, he thinks. Evens, I give up. He rolls the die.

 _Alea iacta est_. Arthur smiles.

-

The sun is lowering herself down to the horizon when Arthur stops at last to rest. More than the money Nash stole, Arthur misses the horse; he's never been a footsoldier, and he feels the lack of training in his protesting muscles.

The trees arched overheard shade a little stream of clear, cold water, pooled in a shallow pond that Arthur kneels at gratefully to drink. At the bottom of the pool glitter a handful of coins, an offering to some unknown water-god. Britannia is a province teeming with such gods, secreted in streams and caves and groves of shadow and dappled sunlight. He reaches down into the pool and brings up a palmful of silt and slick, shining silver.

The coins are all - every one of them - copies of the coin Yusuf had given him, that Nash had stolen.

For the first time in his life, Arthur's jaw drops. "Son of a _bitch_."

"Now, darling," comes a voice from somewhere in the dense foliage. "No profaning the sacred grove."

Arthur makes a cold, solid fist around the coins. " _Eames_."

Like some forest spirit, Eames coalesces from the wood and steps forward, smiling, arms spread peaceably. "In the very flesh."

In the time it takes Arthur to curve one corner of his mouth into a satisfied almost-smile, he has Eames pressed up against the nearest tree, an arm across Eames' throat.

"Oh, Arthur," Eames coughs, stunned and incredulous. "Is this necessary?"

"I'm going to kill you," Arthur says, meaning it with every rain-drenched mud-spattered bone-tired fibre of him.

"Really." Eames's mouth curves in a sly smile. "Is that a gladius at your swordbelt, or are you just _terribly_ pleased to have found me at last?"

Arthur presses closer just for the satisfaction of of Eames' small, choked sound. "I swear by all the gods, I am going to enjoy taking you apart."

"Just as you say, tribune, of course," Eames says, rasping and yet somehow, _somehow_ , smug.

Arthur thinks about choking him to death right here, but that seems unfairly quick, and besides, there are things Eames will need breath to tell him before Arthur can allow himself the satisfaction of a slow, lingering dismemberment.

He snarls, right in Eames' face. "Where are the standards, Eames?"

Eames has the audacity to laugh. Then he swallows, throat jumping against Arthur's forearm. "Oh, Arthur. You know I don't have them."

"Then where are they?"

"They're perfectly safe of course," Eames says. "Ariadne's a good girl. She played her part beautifully."

Arthur says, "Ariadne?"

"Yes," says Eames. "You see, my dear friend Ariadne owns a little land not too far from the fortress - very pretty, really, just a small villa, with a lovely little beech coppice in the back field. It's a perfect place for, oh, burying some rather precious objects? Like, say -"

"The fucking standards," Arthur says. "I. You."

"I, you; yes indeed, Arthur," says Eames. He _licks his lips._

Arthur swallows and says, "So I'm actually going to kill you now."

"Oh, Arthur," says Eames. "And put such a pleasant journey to waste?"

And in the space of a stuttering heartbeat, it's Arthur who's pressed up against the tree, pinned by the solid weight of Eames' body. Eames' broad hands holding him at the shoulders, fingers just light of bruising.

"You see," Eames is saying, with his face pressed so close to Arthur's that Arthur feels the words as hot little puffs of air, "sometimes, darling, your much-vaunted sages have it utterly wrong. Sometimes a journey is entirely about the destination."

Arthur growls, shoves, and is pinned back again.

"You knew I didn't have the standards," Eames says. "You knew I couldn't have. And you followed me anyway."

Arthur, arms pinned, snaps viciously at Eames neck, and gets only a mouthful of ill-tasting travel-cloak for his troubles.

" _Really_ , tribune," Eames says, half-laughing, teasing, the words mouthed roughly against Arthur's temple, Eames' lips warm and dry in the brief moment before Arthur shakes him off. "Is that any way for an upstanding Roman citizen to behave?"

Arthur grits his teeth, face still pressed against Eames' collarbone. Eames smells like sweat and campfire-smoke. Arthur grinds out, "How did you know I'd meet Yusuf? How did you know I was going to pass Saito's villa?"

Eames laughs. "I didn't, of course. When I said I sacrifice generously to my lady Fortune, you really had no idea. Although," he continues, "you also should have seen the statue I sold to the neighbour, just in case."

"You -" Arthur starts, but bites it back. Demands, instead, "How could you possibly know I'd end up here?"

"All roads lead to Rome, darling," says Eames, quirking an eyebrow. His hair is growing out of its strict military crop, slicked back against the fine curve of his skull. The sharp edge of a winding tattoo peeks out from the skewed collar of his tunic. With that look on his face, the knowing half-smile, he really does look like some mischevious forest-spirit. He leans in even closer, close enough that their lips almost brush.

"What the fuck are you doing," Arthur says, voice rough.

"You Romans," Eames says, ignoring Arthur, amused and almost affectionate. "All your reason and straight lines, straight roads, organisation, law and order, columns and figures all added up neatly. What are you all so bloody afraid of, hm?"

Arthur struggles against Eames' heavy body. "What the fuck is this, a philosophy lesson?"

"You build a bloody great Wall to keep out the barbarian hordes, as though you could keep anything irrational at bay with a straight line," says Eames. "And you do it because you're so fascinated by it. All that chaos. Unreason. You try to deny it, don't you, but you can't."

"That's nice," Arthur says, swallowing with a dry throat. He'd roll his eyes, but the effect might be blunted at such close range. "I mean, it's not Cicero, but hey, who is?"

"Arthur." He leans in closer, as if that were possible; body hot where it's pressed against Arthur's, thigh to chest, all dense muscle. " _Why did you follow me?_ "

"If you could just kill me right now," Arthur says, and he thinks that his voice is really impressively steady, considering. "I'd really appreciate it."

But Eames just crooks a smile, and kisses him.


End file.
